Hamas forced Daniella Gilboa to stage her own death during captivity, her mother says
Orly Gilboa says daughter ‘pleaded for her life’ not to do it, but was forced to be covered in powder and debris to make it look like she was hit in IDF strike in propaganda video
Released soldier hostage Daniella Gilboa has said she was forced by the Hamas terror group to record a video faking her death while in captivity, a propaganda clip that had indeed led to rumors that she had been killed, her mother said Wednesday.
Orly Gilboa, Daniella’s mother, told Channel 12 news that “one of the captors simply came to her with a camera and told her, ‘Today we are filming you dead.”
“She pleaded for her life and asked they don’t do it,” she said, describing how they covered her in powder and debris to make it look like she had been hit in an Israeli airstrike.
She said that after her release last month as part of a ceasefire deal with Hamas, Daniella apologized for any part she could have played in her parents thinking she was dead.
“When she saw me and my husband for the first time, she apologized for how she caused us to feel this whole time,” she added.
In November, a spokesman for Hamas’s military wing claimed that “one of the enemy’s female prisoners was killed in an area that is under Zionist aggression in the northern Gaza Strip.”
Alongside the statement, Hamas published a blurred picture of a body it claimed belonged to the slain hostage. While it did not identify the woman, the image quickly led to speculation that it could be Daniella Gilboa since it featured a tattoo identical to one she has.
Hamas has often issued propaganda videos of hostages, in what Israel has said is deplorable psychological warfare.
Gilboa is one of the seven female troops abducted from the IDF surveillance unit at the Nahal Oz army base during the Hamas-led massacre on October 7, 2023.
One of the abducted surveillance soldiers, Ori Megidish, was later rescued alive, and the body of a second one, Noa Marciano, was recovered after she was murdered in captivity.
Gilboa and the four remaining captive soldiers — Liri Albag, Naama Levy, Agam Berger and Karina Ariev — were freed in January during the current ceasefire-hostage deal.
The three-stage ceasefire agreement, reached last month, halted some 15 months of fighting triggered by the group’s October 7 invasion of Israel, when Hamas-led terrorists killed some 1,200 people and took 251 hostages.
Hamas has so far released 21 hostages — civilians, soldiers, and Thai nationals — during the ceasefire that began in January.
Seventy-three hostages kidnapped on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 35 confirmed dead by the IDF. The terror group freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that.
Eight hostages have been rescued alive by troops, and the bodies of 40 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors.
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the body of an IDF soldier who was killed in 2014. The body of another IDF soldier killed in 2014 was recovered from Gaza in January.
